Jean Luc Discard
Registered User
- Jul 11, 2014
- 14,820
- 9,244
This does a good job at explaining Huberdeau's struggles in Calgary vs how he was in Florida
Now I will say, Huberdeau's inability to adapt to different styles of hockey.. also an indictment on him as a player. I don't think other top tier playmakers would do as bad as him if they were in the same situation just because his skillset is limited compared to most.
Decent wrister but overall shot arsenal is meh, Skating is meh, puckhandling is pretty good, but with his skating it's hard to utilize it to full effect. Puck protection... believe it or not, he had his moments over the years, but nowhere near at a consistent level. And as you can see during his time here, he has trouble winning any puck battles.
Either way, it's a pretty bleak situation for him. He's only aging, and if ever Calgary changes their playstyle, by that time he might not even have it in him anymore.
That video is actually pretty good at highlighting how lazy Huby became over the past three, four years with the Panthers. It answers to ppl's question about what happened to Huby. Well, nothing happened. That is the same guy doing the same stuff in a CGY jersey.
He was very good at only one thing and that was carrying the puck into the o-zone in a transition play. He wasn't good at recovering the puck in the d-zone because he had all of the other Panther players backchecking, he wasn't good at goal scoring but he had other players to do that for him, he wasn't good at forechecking and puck battles but, thankfully, he had other players to rely on.
Thus, I'd beg to differ... Huby was consistent. It's each to his/her own to decide whether he was lazy or laser focused on waiting on top of the o-zone blueline for his teammates to get him the puck so that he can carry it and make a toe-drag pass to someone else to finish the job. That was his job with the Panthers. Now his job description has changed but not the man himself. Now expectation is that he should perform like a top5 playmaker in the NHL but it ain't happening because he wasn't operating like one when he was with the Panthers.